The Hunter Mage

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

This time around Vernon could barely hide his surprise but there was nothing he could do as his teacher was in the exact same posture as the students. To say he was lost was an understatement, Vernon had never seen anything like this before.

"Vernon, you have to close your eyes to get the full experience?"

The full experience of what? It was on the tip of his mouth to ask but quickly remembered Cavin said not to ask any questions until they were done. So, he blew air out of his mouth and closed his eyes.

"Breathe in, breathe out." Cavin started to say and Vernon sighed dramatically when he had to breathe out. "Try to clear your mind, paying attention to just my voice."

This went on for almost two full minutes and though he tried as much as he could, Vernon still couldn't seem to get a hang of it. The rest of the students, however, were so attuned, Vernon didn't need to be told they did this on a regular basis.

"Feel your mana flow through you, extract that magic essence." Cavin had chanted.

Okay, what in the blazes? First off, Vernon had absolutely no idea what mana and as curious as he was, he couldn't ask yet. Even though Cavin had said to clear his mind, different thoughts kept rushing in.

Finally, after a few minutes, Cavin ended the show. "How do you feel?" Cavin asked.

Giddy children replied, "Good!"

"Great!" Cavin returned but immediately noticed Vernon's expression and lack of enthusiasm. "Is something wrong, Vernon?"

"I sort of have a couple of questions," Vernon said, and as he spoke he kept his gaze away from Cavin's face. The words were barely out of his mouth when he heard a scoff from the crowd. He didn't need to guess, he knew exactly who it was.

"Go on," Cabin urged. "What are your couple of questions, Vernon?"

Cavin's reply helped Vernon push the thought of Jay aside and he concentrated on his question. "Well…" He started to say, twirling his hand in the process. "What did we just do? What's that?"

"Oh, you mean the meditation?" Cabin asked, not really sure about Vernon's question.

"Medication?"

"What?" Cabin asked and burst into laughter. "No, meditation. It's kind of an exercise that helps the mind and I have found that it works excellently with magic, so I adopted it into our training regime."

"Oh," Vernon replied, staring at a blank spot, trying to look lost so it would give the impression that he understood. He didn't have a single clue as to what she was talking about but he knew that was the best he was going to get as an explanation.

"Yeah, so anything else?"

"Yes, what is Mana?"

"We don't have all day!" Jay interjected.

"Shut it, Jay, you were just as clueless when you first arrived at least I didn't have to explain more than once. Back to your question Vernon, Mana is what powers one's magic."

"Huh! Magic needs powering?" Vernon frowned, wondering why it was called magic in the first place.

Cabin chuckled, "Not in the way you think but yeah magic does need power…" Cabin paused as if wondering how to explain. "Take your body, for instance, the amount of energy you have determines what you would be able to do. Think of mana as your magic energy, it differs from person to person and the more you use it the stronger you get and the better your magic gets. Although this is completely different from your magic skill and you might have a lot of Mana, it doesn't mean you will be able to do extraordinary stuff immediately, you have to practice for that…"

Vernon listened to Cavin go on and on about Magic and Mana, and except for the fact that Magic and Mana are two different things that work and in hand, he got absolutely nothing else from what Cavin said.

"Do you understand?" Cavin asked after the long speech. Vernon could only nod, the impatience of the other students was nothing he could bear any longer and it was obvious they all blamed him for delaying them.

However, he couldn't deny that her speech was educational and he better understood the concept of magic and how it works even though it didn't reflect in his ability to perform it.

"Are you ready?" Cavin asked the whole group and they all screamed in excitement. "Okay, let's start with something simple. How about a water ball?"

"Yes!" Their cries continued.

"Okay, line one, step forward." Unfortunately or fortunately, Vernon was in line one so he had no option but to step forward with them."

"Make a water ball, now slowly increase to see how big you can get it to be before you run out of juice."

"Okay," the girls giggled. They were about four in number with him being the only guy.

Vernon tried to mimic their poses but each was different from the other so he just chose the one on his right side. She had her feet shoulder length apart and her hands slightly raised then she began a slow spinning motion and then stopped.

He was so engrossed in her stance that he missed seeing the entire process of her creating the water ball until it was as big as his head. She kept on and the water ball grew, fast.

Vernon's eyes widened in astonishment. He looked around and it was obvious the rest of the girls couldn't do better than she had. "Hold," Cavin said when it was obvious the girls had made their water balls as big as they could possibly be. "Hold," Cavin repeated.

From the corner of his eyes, Vernon saw a girl's hand shake, not the one next to him and as she shook so did her water ball but it didn't splash, just shook a little. "Steady," Cabin said, noticing her too.

However, it was soon obvious to everyone that she was at her limit and before Cavin could mutter a new command, the whole class gasped as the water fell, bracing themselves for a huge splash.